


Albatross

by Dulcinea



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2008), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 11:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10829913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dulcinea/pseuds/Dulcinea
Summary: “Why do you like dolls?” Yondu always said the same thing: “Because.”





	Albatross

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written a fic in two years, so I am very rusty, and this is my first time *ever* writing in this fandom, but after watching GOTG 2 last night, I HAD to write this. It wouldn't leave me alone. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will write something like this, but hey, more fics the better? :) Title from a Fleetwood Mac instrumental (one of my favs).

They always said the same thing. There were variations — “what’s up with the toys?” “what’s this?” “what are they?” — but it essentially came back to the same point. The same question. 

“Why do you like dolls?”

Yondu always said the same thing: “Because.” 

The first time he kept one, he thought it’d make a little money on the market. But the crystals that comprised the object were pretty worthless, so he threw it in the back of his room, thinking nothing of it. 

He didn’t un-earth it himself. The next kid did. “What’s this?” She smiled — her first smile since he picked her up — as the blue crystals that made its body shined under the lamp light. “It’s pretty.”

“It’s crap.”

“Can I keep it?”

Yondu grunted. 

She played with it for the entire trip. Yondu kept it when it came back to him a week later, along with the cash and another pick up. 

The toys made the kids compliant. Happy. Made transport easier. There was a use for them, after all.

He collected them one by one. His men questioned him in the beginning. “What are these?” “What’s this?” “Are these toys?” Doubts. Confusion. A little bit of anger. 

Yondu made an example out of one man, and that little issue never came up again. 

One by one, his collection grew. He hid them in plain sight to start — a figurine behind a priceless vase, a green “thing” peeking behind a necklace he snatched on his first Ravagers hunt — so the kids could see, but his men wouldn’t have it shoved in their faces. 

The kids loved it. They played with what he had, until they reached the planet. He started keeping a toy or two near his chair as he piloted, just to keep the kid quiet. 

Just for that. Business. Nothing else. 

Then one day, when he got his units, an assignment and one of his dolls back, a memory smacked him in the head. One kid a while ago played with this thing all the way. He slept with it, ate with it, gave it a dumb, alien name. 

Yondu held that doll for days as he went to the next target. 

He was pissed off, at himself. He took out his anger at his men the whole trip, unable to voice why. His men didn’t question it. The last kid was quite annoying with how clingy and loud he was. 

But his anger didn’t dissipate. It worsened the more he thought about it. The more he looked at the doll. 

It wasn’t the fact that he remembered the kid. It wasn’t the fact he still knew the name the kid gave the doll, or what the kid looked like, or what his voice sounded like, or how he had big wide innocent eyes, or how he laughed at almost everything. 

Yondu remembered _everything._

_Each_ and _every_ kid. 

He’d look at one toy and remember the boy with green antenna he picked up. Or a little girl with pink skin. The kid with the stutter. The kid with blue eyes and big smile. He’d look at another and remember the one kid who was terrified but warmed up the second she saw his collection and picked this very doll up and felt at home. 

Every kid. Every dumb, stupid, fucking kid, in detail. 

“Not again,” Yondu said as they reached the next destination. “Not this time.”

That day, Yondu and the Ravagers stole Peter Quill. 

They never delivered him to Ego. 

Unlike the others, Yondu never let Peter play with the dolls. He yelled at him instead. Ordered him around. Threatened to eat him — daily. Made him _fight._ And Peter — terrified, frightened Peter Quill — grew up and learned. He learned well. 

Yondu taught Peter everything he knew. Peter wasn’t ever going to be like those kids he stole. Peter was going to be different. Learn to shoot, learn to steal, learn to hide. After all, he was small enough to fit in those tight crevices, and once he got to be too big, he’d be trained and ready to take on missions with. And when he did grow up, he was helpful. Sometimes. He goofed up on more than a few occasions, got a bit too cocky, at times a bit too rebellious, and his men said he was “too soft on the boy” (and Yondu shut those comments up pretty quick). But overall, Peter was good. Peter was a Ravager. 

Peter was his. 

If Yondu had a real upbringing, with real parents, he would’ve known what was coming when Peter stole the orb from him. He would’ve known Peter was demonstrating his final rebellion, separating from his father figure and ready to start his own family with that weird group comprised of a green-skinned assassin, a talking tree, an animal and a straight-up monster. He would’ve known Peter was his own man now, his own person. 

It took a long bloody fight, a truce, an exchange of goods and one more doll for Yondu to come to a conclusion he spent most of his life ignoring. 

He kept that doll near him afterwards. A source of pride.

Each toy in his collection stayed in full view on his ship. When he looked at them, the memories came, the faces of each child, but he didn’t hold any anger. Not anymore. Just a sadness. A lingering sadness that would start from the inside, swallow up his lungs, drive up the back of his throat to his nose and his eyes and then coat his mind in a sort of black-blueness and stay for a while. A deserved sadness. 

But that one doll eased the black-blueness away. The fuzzy haired, stupid smiling doll he found in that dumb orb, and the memories that came with it. The good memories. Needed, beloved memories of him and Peter. The dumb kid who changed everything. The kid who gave him the redemption he needed. 

Yondu smiled.

He grasped Peter’s face. He couldn’t feel it. 

_My boy._

Peter’s eyes watered over, his body protected by the space suit, looking like the same kid he picked up years ago. 

So cold. Tired. 

Blackness creeped in.

_My son._

Peter screamed his name. 

Yondu’s vision blurred. His hands floated from Peter’s cheeks.

_I did right._

The blackness took over.


End file.
